5 Welcome to Muslim world: collectivisation

and differentiation

Introduction
In this chapter we focus on uses of language in the corpus that (a) collectivise
Muslims into a single group and (b) differentiate them from others. Our
earlier analyses (see Chapter 4) found that some of the most frequent phrases
that directly referred to Muslims in the corpus were terms that were poten-
tially collectivising and differentiating: Muslim world, Muslim community,
Muslim country. Clearly, with so many references to these terms, it is
worthwhile spending some time examining them in more detail. Are such
terms mainly used in ways to imply that all Muslims are the same as each
other, and, if so, in what ways are they viewed as the same? When journalists
write about Muslim countries, which countries are they actually referring to,
and how often do articles attempt to signal difference within Islam, for
example by referencing terms for different branches of the faith, such as
Sunni and Shia?
Other writers have pointed out the importance of considering these pro-
cesses when examining the representation of social groups. John Richardson
(2004: 231–2, emphasis in original) argues that
British broadsheets divide and reject Muslims via a three part process: first they
identify a ‘space’ – which can be social or mental or physical (etc.) – and rhetorically
separate it from ‘Our own’ space; second, they explain the workings or composition of
this space in contrast to ‘Our own’; and third British broadsheet newspapers place a
(negative) social value on both this space and its composition. These are, in turn,
processes of separation; differentiation and negativisation.
Another author, Said (1997: xv–xvi), argues that media uses of the term Islam
actually define a ‘relatively small proportion of what actually takes place in
the Islamic world, which numbers a billion people and includes dozens of
countries, societies, traditions, languages, and, of course, an infinite number
of different experiences’. Said goes on to say that ‘this is unacceptable
generalization of the most irresponsible sort, and could never be used for
any other religious, cultural, or demographic group on earth’. Said made this
argument prior to 9/11, and we therefore wondered whether or not the

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 124 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

increased focus on Islam after 9/11 would have resulted in the British media
attempting to make a greater effort to be aware of the wide range of distinc-
tions and experiences that Said refers to. On the other hand, it could be the case
that, after 9/11, newspapers would be even less likely to make such distinc-
tions, but instead refer to Islam as a more collective, homogeneous entity.
We begin by examining phrases that (on the surface) appear to represent
Muslims as a single group such as Muslim world. We then consider terms
that refer to specific branches or movements within Islam, such as Shia, Sunni
and Wahhabi. How frequently do newspapers use these terms, and in what
contexts do they appear?

Muslim community
Let us start with the term Muslim community. In the previous chapter (Table 4.9)
we saw how community is the most frequent immediate right-hand
collocate of Muslim in the majority of years in the corpus (1998 to 2000 and
2004 to 2008). Muslim community occurs 6,553 times in the corpus, and in 4,656
cases (71 per cent), it is prefaced by the definite article the, suggesting that the
British press normally references the notion of Muslim community as a single,
homogeneous mass. Only a handful of articles are critical of the term, so
examples such as the one below are extremely rare:
What the list also shows is that the idea of a one-size-fits-all ‘Muslim community’, or a
commonality of experience, is a myth… Some talk about ‘the Muslim community’,
others feel there is no such thing (Times, 21 March 2009).
I’m irritated, too, with the boneheadedness of some of our discussion about the Muslim
community, as though it was homogeneous, as though it was somehow responsible
itself for the bombings, as though, by an act of will, it could stop this madness from
happening (David Aaronovitch, Times, 26 July 2005).
There are twenty-six uses of ‘the Muslim community’ in scare quotes, most of
which express similar scepticism about the term, in order to note the plurality of
Muslim experience. However, the television presenter Jeremy Clarkson, writing
in The Sun, uses the term in scare quotes in a different way. Clarkson’s 1,200-
word article relates to Tony Blair’s resignation as prime minister; in it he attacks
Blair, ID cards, bus lanes, the civil service, speed limits, speed cameras, health
and safety training and police bureaucracy, as well as bans on fox hunting,
hooded tops, littering, public smoking, fur farming, advertising to children and
Christian religious symbols. He also claims that Blair used ‘The Guardian and
others from the metropolitan elite…to change the way we speak’:
In fact, we can no longer upset any ‘community’ which is why the ‘Muslim commu-
nity’ was allowed to parade through London urging passers-by to blow up a skyscraper
and behead the infidels (30 June 2007).

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 Muslim community 125

One reading of Clarkson’s use of ‘Muslim community’ here is that people

who (allegedly) urge people to blow up skyscrapers should not be referred to
as a community, and that people who use the term are legitimising terrorist
sentiments. The association of a monolithic term such as Muslim community
(even in scare quotes) with incitement to terrorism is worrying, although
Clarkson’s position appears to be at the extreme end of what is considered
printable for British journalism.
However, generally, the term Muslim community is not questioned, and
is instead used in three ways. First, the term can refer to all the Muslims
in a particular town or city. For example, there are references to the
Muslim community in places such as Bradford, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glas-
gow, Gloucester, Liverpool, London and Luton. However, a second use
of Muslim community refers to a single community that spans the whole
of the United Kingdom, and is often used in constructions such as the
British Muslim community (237 occurrences). A third way involves ref-
erences to an international Muslim community (eleven instances), global
Muslim community (twenty instances) or world(wide) Muslim community
(nineteen). The term Muslim community, when used without markers such
as Bradford, British or worldwide, must therefore be understood via
context.
A detailed analysis of 100 concordance lines of the term, taken at random,
found that seventy-eight cases referred to community at the national level
(usually the United Kingdom), seventeen referred to local Muslim comm-
unities, and only five referred to the concept of a global Muslim community.
If these figures are representative, it appears, then, that Muslim community is
generally used in the UK press to refer to all British Muslims. Such a
conceptualisation has already been problematised by others. For example,
Halliday (2006: 31) writes that ‘there is no such thing as a single “Muslim”
community in the UK, any more than there is a single “Jewish” or “Christian”
one’.
However, it was not always easy to determine exactly what the term
referred to. For example, in The Independent (27 August 2005), the Pope is
described as visiting Cologne: ‘Then he meets the Muslim community and
I see them on the screen, heads slightly bowed, eyes glancing furtively
towards the cameras.’ Here the Muslim community could possibly refer to
a small number of representatives rather than the large numbers that the
term community implies.1 Additionally, in the Daily Express (16 June
2009), the celebrity heiress Paris Hilton is described as visiting Dubai
and employing ‘a “cultural guide” to chaperone her around the city and

1
As an aside, the use of the adverb ‘furtively’ is notable here, implying guilt.

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 126 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

Concordance 5.1 Muslim communities as offended

anxious that the move could antagonise Muslim communities and increase feelings of resentment

They’re scared of anything that might go

Muslim community .
down badly with the

might be offensive to some in the Muslim community and that it could ‘incite acts of violence

The broadcaster also enraged sections of the Muslim community and the West Midlands Police over

move would cause resentment in the Muslim community .

in a dawn raid that caused uproar in Muslim community .

to avoid upsetting Muslims, the Muslim community will find it insulting because

ensure she didn’t make any gaffes that could offend the entire Muslim
community’. Here it is unclear whether ‘entire Muslim community’ refers
to Muslims only in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates or in the whole world.
(This case was categorised by us as referring to the whole world, on account
of the use of the word ‘entire’, though other interpretations are possible.)
A reasonably common way (eighty-seven occurrences) to refer to a Muslim
community is to describe how many members it has, particularly by using a
number followed by the word strong (e.g. ‘Luton has a 30,000-strong Muslim
community’; The Independent, 11 March 2009). Other collocates that denote the
size of such communities are large (117 times as an L1 collocate of community
or communities), growing (seventeen), biggest (thirteen), largest (thirty-four),
sizeable (five), substantial (four), significant (three) and vast (two).
Further examination of concordance lines reveals two clear discourse
prosodies surrounding the term Muslim community. The first occurs with
collocates such as antagonise, offensive, upset, uproar, resentment and anger,
and constructs the Muslim community as having the potential to be offended
(as with the Paris Hilton example above). Concordance 5.1 shows a small
sample of this discourse prosody.
While there are many cases that portray the Muslim community as angry or
offended, a subset of these stories is interesting in that they describe other people
(non-Muslims) as attempting to ban certain things in order not to offend Muslims:
[T]he ridiculous decision by a Government quango who rejected a story based on the
Three Little Pigs classic in case it offended the Muslim community. The digital remake
of the children’s story – made by a small Newcastle publisher – was criticised by
Becta, the education technology agency who refused to put it forward for an award.
Muslims, however, have made it clear they weren’t offended by the computer based
program and a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said it should be welcome
in schools (Sun, 31 January 2008).

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 Muslim community 127

Such stories, which characterise officials or other PC people as misguided and

oversensitive, tend to contain a quote from a representative Muslim who is
described as not being offended, and normally occur in the right-leaning tabloids:2
PIGGYBANKS are facing the axe – because some Muslims could take offence.
Britain’s top High Street banks have ruled the money-boxes are politically incorrect.
But last night the move sparked snoutrage. And one of Britain’s four Muslim MPs,
Khalid Mahmoud, said: ‘A piggybank is just an ornament. Muslims would never be
seriously offended’ (Daily Star, 24 October 2005).

However, despite the fact that the article stresses that Muslims would not
be offended, such stories may be interpreted by readers somewhat differently.
The following day the Daily Star’s ‘Text maniacs’ column (which prints text
messages from members of the public) contained several messages about the
proposed banning of piggy banks:
why do we have to bend over backwards so we dont offend the muslim community?
we cant even have piggy banks! we cant even have a st george flag without bein told
it’s offensive. what’s next – ban england football shirts?
muslims r offended by our piggy banks!? Then the £56 me n ma wife n ma 4 girls have
got in our piggy bank 2 help the ppl in pakistan wil b spent on a fry up.
Y shud we change r way of life just 2 stop offending muslims. they aint neva gonna change
theirs. Maybe they shud try eating pork. a nice bacon sarnie cud change any1’s mind.
This misinterpretation of the original story casts Muslims as easily offended and
paints them, rather than the alleged bank bosses, as being oversensitive. The Daily
Star also published some texts from Muslims who were not offended by piggy
banks, but it could be argued that the newspaper was irresponsible in publishing the
texts quoted above. First, because of their hostile tone: it is insensitive to suggest
that Muslims try eating pork or to exaggerate the story to refer to banning football
shirts. Second, the text messages are likely to give a false impression to readers
who had not read the previous day’s article (which did not cite any examples of
offended Muslims). However, with such a large number of references in the press
to outraged responses within ‘the Muslim community’, it is unsurprising that some
readers misinterpret stories when it is not Muslims who actually are angry.
A second discourse prosody of the Muslim community concerns the view of
the Muslim community as separate from the rest of Britain. This is referred to
via phrases such as non-assimilation, driving a wedge, too little understanding
and simmering conflict. There are also many references to actions that need to
be taken or are being taken in order to encourage integration, assimilation,

2
The stories about banning Three Little Pigs and piggybanks show how two right-leaning tabloid
concerns (Muslims and political correctness) are combined. The Daily Mail and the Daily
Express are particularly interested in stories that highlight cases of ‘political correctness’, and
have the highest frequencies of this term in the corpus.

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 128 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

Concordance 5.2 Implication of a divide between the Muslim community and

‘the rest of the UK’

Britain’s record in integrating the Muslim community and in fostering a secure, strong

creating a wedge between the Muslim community and mainstream society.”

conclusion that the non-assimilation of Muslim communities and the misogyny of Islamic

by the simmering conflict between the Muslim community and the white British.

is too little understanding between the Muslim community and the wider community, and vi

to help officers interact better with the Muslim community across Sheffield.

ould kickstart its engagement with the Muslim community .

44% of all British voters who say that Muslim community should do more to integrate

better interaction and engagement between the Muslim community and ‘the
wider community’ (see Concordance 5.2).
Common topics associated with Muslim communities are: the notion of a
backlash or attacks on them; concerns about relations between such commu-
nities and non-Muslims; and the extent to which such communities are
alienated, resulting in extremism, radicalisation and terrorism:
‘The war on terror has had a devastating effect,’ he said. ‘We have become targets of
the security apparatus and are seen as an enemy within unjustifiably. This has resulted
in a backlash against the Muslim community. We have become the hidden victims’
(Guardian, 23 April 2005).
A former pub has been transformed into Britain’s most prominent sharia court
operating brazenly in the heart of a Muslim community beset by radical extremism
(Daily Express, 9 February 2008).
Although the Muslim community is normally represented as homogeneous,
there are times when certain members are viewed as different, and often as
dangerous, as the following examples containing within the Muslim commu-
nity/communities show:
I am also sometimes confronted by those who point out that there are elements within
the Muslim community who pose a threat to our very security (Daily Express, 26
November 2008).
I think some of the extremists within the Muslim community essentially want to win a
battle, particularly for young Muslims, and persuade them that being a Muslim is
incompatible with being British (Guardian, 24 March 2003).
These results show there are people within the Muslim communities who are so far
away from the mainstream of society, as well as the mainstream of British Muslims
(Daily Mail, 4 July 2006).

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 Muslim community 129

Similar constructions are found with the phrase sections of the Muslim
community:
It is undeniable that certain sections of the Muslim community are hotbeds of
fundamentalism and misogyny, perhaps to a greater extent than any other modern
religion (Observer, 25 June 2006).
The support among sections of the Muslim community for Bin Laden’s cause was also
underlined by the numbers who headed for Afghanistan 18 months ago to try to repel
American-led forces (Independent, 1 May 2003).
Comparable patterns are found for part(s) of the Muslim community, members
of the Muslim community and elements of the Muslim community.
The term Muslim community is particularly frequent in 2005 and 2006. This
raises the question of the reasons behind this increased frequency, as well as the
question of whether the higher frequency correlates with different discourses. In
these two years frequent lexical collocates of Muslim community include Britain,
British, leaders, members and people. A frequent grammatical collocate in this
period is within (196 cases), which tends to be used in the construction within the
Muslim community and refers to extremists, extreme factions, unrest, fear,
attacks, problems, fractures, disunity, divisions, tension, ill-feeling, ructions
and debate. The collocates of Muslim community for the other years are identical,
including the high frequency of within being used to refer to divisions, tensions
and extremism. So Muslim community is not referred to differently in 2005 and
2006; such concerns about the Muslim community simply appear to peak in this
period. An indication for the reason is other frequent collocates of Muslim
community during 2005 and 2006: London, police, attacks and terrorism, which
mainly refer to the London transport bombings of July 2005. Examining the fifty-
three occurrences of Muslim community/communities and London together in
2005–6, there are a wide range of references to the London bombs: some
concordance lines containing warnings against a backlash, others claiming that
the bombers came from Muslim communities:
The last reaction needed to the London attacks is reprisals against Muslim commu-
nities. The criminals responsible were inhuman and their actions have nothing to do
with religion (Daily Mirror, 14 July 2005).
The absence also suggests that America, the nation of immigrants, is not home to the
sort of disaffected, unassimilated Muslim community from which Britain’s London
Underground bombers sprang (Independent, 11 September 2006).
Thus, there is support for the hypothesis that the London bombings of 2005
caused the British press to turn more attention to the concept of a reified, single
British Muslim community – a community constructed as easy to anger, disen-
gaged from the remainder of Britain, home to a number of extremists (who had the
potential to become terrorists) and also at risk from a backlash (perhaps unsurpris-
ingly, considering that list of qualities ascribed to the community by the press).

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 130 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

Muslim world
If the term Muslim community is used as a way of referring to a mainly
homogeneous group of British Muslims (containing some dangerous elem-
ents), how does Muslim world fare? After community, world is the second
most frequent immediate right-hand collocate of Muslim, with Muslim world
occurring 5,081 times. This phrase is used with less variation than Muslim
community in the corpus; it tends simply to refer to all Muslims across the
world, particularly countries that have significant Muslim populations:
‘We would be doing it regardless of religion,’ he said. ‘But it does give the Muslim
world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American
values in action’ (Daily Telegraph, 6 January 2005).
Iran, Iraq and Syria have been the only Muslim countries to condemn the US and
British bombings, though the mood on the streets in much of the Muslim world has
been hostile (Guardian, 11 October 2001).

Scanning the 5,000-odd concordance lines of Muslim world, we tried to find

cases that used the term in order to imply that the Muslim world was not a
homogeneous group. We initially looked for constructions such as within the
Muslim world (forty-six cases), although only ten of these cases actually refer to
the Muslim world as containing different perspectives or types of people. Other
phrases that imply differences are parts/part of the Muslim world (eighty-eight
cases) and sections of the Muslim world (five cases). These low frequencies
suggest what we did find – numerous constructions that imply homogeneity:
throughout the Muslim world (162 cases), across the Muslim world (323 cases),
the entire Muslim world (sixty-five cases), the wider Muslim world (fifty-four
cases), whole (of the) Muslim world (thirty-six cases), relations/relationships
with the Muslim world (eighty-two cases), reach* out to the Muslim world (forty
cases), address/message/speech/dialogue to the Muslim world (sixty-six cases)
and all over the Muslim world (twenty-six cases). A construction that implies that
the Muslim world consists of a majority is much/most of the Muslim world
(seventy-seven cases). It is clear, then, that, for the most part, the press represents
the Muslim world as a single entity.
One way to understand more fully how Muslim world is used is to see
what other concepts it occurs with. Examining the phrase Muslim world
and, it was found that it is most frequently referred to in connection with
the West (sixty-three cases), and in most cases a distinction is made about
differences between the Muslim world and the West (a random sample of
ten of these cases is shown in Concordance 5.3).
As with the British Muslim community’s relationship to the ‘wider commu-
nity’ in Britain, the Muslim world here is characterised in terms of poor
relations with the West. This is directly referenced by terms such as bitterly

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 Muslim world 131

Concordance 5.3 Muslim world and the

a distinction these days between the Muslim world and the western world rather than the

damage” to relations between the Muslim world and the west, Mr Sacranie added.

bridges between a bitterly resentful Muslim world and the West; between an anti-American

such heightened unease between the Muslim world and the West, and when many Turks are

city’s bid to build bridges between the Muslim world and the West. He said ‘A unique

help to heal the divisions between the Muslim world and the West. He asked ‘Is it really going

increase in tension between the Muslim world and the West. There would also be the

deepened the alienation between the Muslim world and the West – with consequences not

. It will define relations between the Muslim world and the West.” Turning to the

better understanding between the Muslim world and the West. In Cambridge, the HRH

resentful, heightened unease, divisions and increase in tension, whereas terms

such as build bridges, better understanding and help to heal clearly imply that
there are poor relationships that need to be overcome.3 It is perhaps interesting
to note a disparity in the labelling of Muslims as belonging to a ‘world’ and ‘the
West’, which is simply named as a point on the compass. The term Muslim
world seems to imply a different world from the default world of the West,
which does not seem to require being labelled as a ‘world’. Muslim world
occurs 5,081 times in the corpus while a similar term, Islamic world, occurs
3,083 times. The term Western world occurs only 1,051 times, so it is rarer,
though still reasonably frequent. However, there are 39,612 references to the
West in the corpus. Even if we discount such cases as the West Bank/Midlands/
Indies/coast/End/Country, we are still left with over 25,000 cases of the West in
the corpus, so Western world is clearly not the dominant form used to refer to
the West. There is no direct equivalent of ‘the West’ that one can use to refer to
Islam, meaning that Muslim world and Islamic world are, unlike Western
world, the dominant phrases used to refer to Islam worldwide.
What other types of world are commonly found? To answer this question, it is
useful to refer to a different corpus, composed of a wider range of texts.
The ukWaC corpus consists of about 1.5 billion words of general English

3
Less frequently, the Muslim world is also sometimes referred to along with the Arab world
(thirty-two cases), although here these two ‘worlds’ are constructed as linked together.
A typical example would be: ‘There is a gulf of misunderstanding between the Arab and
Muslim world and the western world’ (The Independent, 4 November 2001).

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 132 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

(collected via internet sources) and is available from the online Sketch Engine
interface. Common left-hand descriptors of world in this corpus are Arab,
Western, English-speaking, Islamic and Muslim. Interestingly, adjectives for
other religions, such as Jewish, Christian and Catholic, were not commonly
used with reference to world. In addition, terms that distinguish between differ-
ent branches of Islam were not common as collocates of world; there were only a
handful of references to Sunni world or Shia world.4 Instead, Muslim world
seems to construct Muslims as belonging to a homogeneous group that is
distinctly separate from non-Muslims. Clearly, the same thing is happening with
terms such as English-speaking world or Western world – but, rather than
defining people by religion, members of these ‘worlds’ are instead explicitly
defined by the language that they speak or where they live. The terms Western
world and the West, often occurring, as they do, in opposition to Muslim world,
are potentially problematic for Muslims who actually do live in ‘the West’. Does
a British Muslim inhabit the Muslim world, a Western one, or both? The way that
the terms are used makes them appear to be mutually exclusive categories. One
way to explain the apparent discrepancy is to interpret the terms the West and
Muslim/Islamic world as referring not to a geographical area and a religion,
respectively, but to socio-cultural values and practices.
The term Muslim world has been strongly criticised by Carpenter and
Cagaptay (2009), who write that it ‘is not only an analytical error – it’s also
a critical public diplomacy mistake… Muslim world unfairly and singularly
assigns adherents of Islam into a figurative ghetto. And particularly in the
post-September 11 [sic], this relegation carries a real moral hazard. Extrem-
ists are the only Muslim group that strongly advocates tying all Muslims
together politically, in a united global community… Every time the United
States speaks to the Muslim world, then it inadvertently legitimizes the
extremists’ vision.’
A related point is made by Said (1997: 10), who argues that the terms Islam
and the West are often used in ignorance: ‘How many people who use the
labels angrily or assertively have a solid grip on all aspects of Western
tradition, or on Islamic jurisprudence, or on the actual languages of the
Islamic world? Very few, obviously, but this does not prevent people from
confidently characterising “Islam” and “the West”, or from believing that they
know exactly what it is they are talking about.’
John Richardson (2006: 231) also remarks on Muslim world as being a
rhetorical process of textual exclusion, pointing to ‘the referential ambiguity,
fuzziness and indeterminacy of this phrase paradoxically adding to its utility, its
breadth and its power’. We would agree that there is potential danger in using

4
There were eleven references to ‘Sunni world’ in ukWAC, four to ‘Shia world’ and 1,837 to
‘Muslim world’.

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 Muslim world 133

Muslim world, particularly as other religions are not normally characterised in

this way, and because the term seems to background differences between
branches of Islam. However, it is doubtful whether most journalists and others
who use Muslim world are aware of this critical reading of the term.5 Addition-
ally, we should note that there are other potential interpretations of Muslim world
and that the term is incorporated in the name of the Muslim World League, one of
the largest Islamic non-governmental organisations, while there are journals
entitled The Muslim World and Muslim World Journal of Human Rights. Per-
haps, then, the term can become more problematic depending on the context of
its use. For example, if it is used repeatedly to suggest that there are problems
between ‘the Muslim world’ and ‘the West’, then the sense of two disparate
entities will be exaggerated. As suggested by Concordance 5.3, such a construc-
tion does appear to be frequent in the corpus. Common collocates of Muslim
world include references to the ‘other’ (west, western, America, American,
British, Britain), relationships (relations, relationship, between, against) and
words that indicate conflict (war, protests, anger, outrage, violent, provoked,
attack, inflamed, fury, hatred, conflict, resentment, damaged), as well as words
that imply attempts to resolve conflict (friendship, peace, dialogue, bridge,
bridges, unity, understand).
One question that might be asked at this point concerns agency. If journal-
ists write about the Muslim world and the West as experiencing problems,
then who is seen as responsible for trying to resolve the problems? Is the
Muslim world (or anyone who apparently belongs to it) constructed as
actively trying to improve the situation? In order to investigate this question
further, we examined a concordance of Muslim world that contained the
words bridge/bridges. Of the twenty-seven cases that were found, nine were
attributed to attempts by the United States or Americans to build bridges
between the Muslim world and the west (America one, Barack Obama seven,
Colin Powell one), four were linked to British attempts (Tony Blair two,
Britain two), one to Europe, eight to Turkey, three to British Muslims and two
to others. Although this is only a small sample, it suggests that, in general,
leaders of Muslim countries tend to be represented less in terms of attempting
to ‘build bridges’ than Western leaders, although Turkey – which is some-
times viewed in newspaper articles as occupying a kind of ‘middle ground’ –
is associated with bridge building. An example of this is:
An Islamic democracy in Turkey would allow Europe to build bridges east to the
Muslim world, just as Europe must build bridges across the Atlantic to North and
South America (Observer, 24 November 2002).

5
Indeed, we note that, in a similar way, in previous research one of the authors of this book has
also used this term uncritically; see Baker (2010: 328).

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 134 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

The following two examples demonstrate how members of ‘the Muslim

world’ are positioned as uncooperative or resentful:
When the US President offered a hand of peace to Iran, he was rebuffed. When he
eloquently sought to build bridges with the Muslim world, Iran denounced his offer as
a trick (Times, 13 June 2009).
For a world that is certainly more divided and dangerous than at any time since the first
half of the 20th century, here was a moment of hope: an opportunity to build bridges
between a bitterly resentful Muslim world and the West (Daily Mail, 6 November 2008).
Are the collocates any different when we consider 2001, which is when Muslim
world overtook Muslim community (see Table 4.9) in terms of frequency?6
Collocates of Muslim world in 2001 are Bin, Laden, Taliban, America, American,
West, US and war, suggesting that the increased references to Muslim world in
this time period are linked to the 9/11 attacks. It would be interesting to examine
how the press conceived of the relationship between Bin Laden and the Muslim
world during this period,. Was Bin Laden viewed as a dissident, a representative
or as having the approval of the Muslim world? A concordance of Muslim world
co-occurring with Bin Laden in 2001 was examined, producing twenty-four
lines. Some cases represented the Muslim world as against Bin Laden:
The message came as the Muslim world closed ranks against Bin Laden in an amazing
show of solidarity (Sun, 18 September 2001).
An international panel of top Muslims has BACKED the attacks on Afghanistan…
A No10 spokesman said: ‘It gives the lie to the idea that bin Laden speaks for the
Muslim world’ (Sun, 13 October 2001).
However, other examples involve representations of the Muslim world as
not believing that Bin Laden was responsible for the attacks:
Some officials hope that making the tape public could counter concern in the Muslim
world that bin Laden has been unjustly accused of involvement in the attacks, the
Washington Post said (Daily Telegraph, 10 December 2001).
Given the sketchiness of the evidence released to the public by the US and UK
governments there is widespread denial in the Arab and Muslim world that Osama
bin Laden had any involvement in the attack on America on September 11 (Guardian,
24 October 2001).
Other examples imply that Bin Laden is able to influence the Muslim
world, or parts of it:
Bin Laden electrified parts of the Muslim world within hours of the first bombs by
releasing a video in which he tried to polarise the conflict between the west and
Islam… (Guardian, 12 October 2001).

6
The frequency of ‘Muslim world’ also peaked in 2001, compared to other years in the corpus.

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 Muslim Council and Muslim leaders 135

Perhaps we Britons have simply decided that aerial bombardment is not an effective
way to defeat al-Qaeda. Maybe some of them accept that aerial assault can only boost
Osama bin Laden’s standing in the Muslim world, spectacularly confirming his claim
that this really is a clash of the west against Islam – pitting the richest country in the
world against the poorest (Daily Mirror, 1 November 2001).
Thus, while the British press do not represent the ‘Muslim world’ as being
generally supportive of Bin Laden directly after 9/11, there are other con-
cerns: about the ‘widespread denial’ in the Muslim world of his involvement,
or in the danger that he may succeed in polarising the conflict by influencing
the Muslim world.

Muslim Council and Muslim leaders

Although the Muslim world is represented as being in conflict with the West,
it rarely seems to be the case that the term is problematised in the press. Will this be
the case with two other frequent constructions that are examined in this chapter –
Muslim Council and Muslim leaders? The two terms are considered together, as
they tend to have very similar representations. After community and world, council
is the next most frequent word to occur after Muslim in the corpus, occurring 3,753
times. Of these, 2,936 instances (78 per cent) occur in the phrase Muslim Council
of Britain, and the majority of the other occurrences also refer to the same council.
On its website, the MCB describes itself as ‘a national representative Muslim
umbrella body with over 500 affiliated national, regional and local organisations,
mosques, charities and schools. The MCB is pledged to work for the common
good of society as a whole; encouraging individual Muslims and Muslim organisa-
tions to play a full and participatory role in public life.’ In terms of dispersion
across the corpus, Muslim Council tends to occur most often in the broadsheet
newspapers (particularly The Times and The Guardian), and almost 60 per cent of
its occurrences are between 2004 and 2006, with the peak year being 2005.
Muslim leaders (2,663 occurrences in total) was most popular in the years 2005
to 2007, as well as in 2001, suggesting that there was more focus on this construc-
tion as a result of 9/11 and 7/7. However, unlike Muslim world and Muslim
community, there are a noticeable number of cases in which the term is questioned.
In the right-leaning tabloid press, a number of columnists question the authenticity
of Muslim leaders, referring to them as so-called, self-styled or self-appointed.
Such leaders are viewed by some columnists as benefiting unjustly from their
position, and their opinions are characterised negatively as whines and bleats:
Grants have been dished out like confetti to Muslim organisations, and knighthoods and
peerages to self-styled Muslim leaders (Leo McKinstry, Daily Express, 20 February 2006).
Indeed, far from blaming those who committed these atrocities in the name of Allah,
we are encouraged to treat seriously the murderous grievances of self-styled Muslim

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 136 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

leaders as if their bleats about British foreign policy justified such carnage (Leo
McKinstry, Daily Express, 22 May 2006).
I don’t normally want to hear the whines and bleats of so-called ‘Muslim leaders’ or
terrorist suspects’ mate Shami Chakrabarti, but their silence over the sentencing of
madman Parviz Khan has been deafening (Jon Gaunt, Sun, 22 February 2008).
Since 9/11, self-appointed Muslim leaders have seized every opportunity to advance
their agenda (Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail, February 21, 2006).
A strong discourse prosody surrounding Muslim leaders is that they are
viewed as prone to offence (in much the same way as Muslim communities).
Concordance 5.4 gives a small sample of some of the ways that this discourse
prosody is realised. In this concordance, Muslim leaders are presented as
being offended, angry, outraged, hostile, indignant and unsmiling, as well as
making demands. The following example demonstrates the sense of hypocrisy
that is felt about Muslim leaders, particularly in the right-leaning tabloids:
Given the scale of the slaughter envisaged by the airline plotters, it is grotesque of
Muslim leaders now to pose as the injured party. They should be apologising for the
misery that their fellow believers have inflicted on the mainstream British public (Leo
McKinstry, Daily Express, 14 August 2006).
How strong is this discourse prosody, though? An examination of 100 random
concordance lines of the term Muslim leaders found that in twenty-one cases
they were represented as condemning something, in six cases they were
shown to be angry at something, in five cases they were seen to be making
demands, in four cases they were represented as raising fears or concerns
about something, in four cases they were constructed as hypocritical, in three

Concordance 5.4 Muslim leaders as prone to offence

drowned out by the indignant chorus of Muslim leaders and Western liberals vibrating with

concern will be the hostile attitude of Muslim leaders . The Imam’s Council said they had not

of Number 10, the unsmiling faces of Muslim leaders behind him, can all be scripted by his

They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Muslims and Hindus

and based upon a fear of offending Muslim leaders . “Someone is not telling the truth here

TV host Kilroy-Silk had earlier outraged Muslim leaders by branding Arabs “Suicide bombers,

Archbishop of Canterbury has angered Muslim leaders by saying the faith was no longer

demand wholesale exemptions. Some Muslim leaders are appalled by the legislation. The

two people were later arrested. Muslim leaders slammed the Jewish rally. Massoud

At the time of Lord Carey’s comments Muslim leaders responded with anger and

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 Muslim Council and Muslim leaders 137

cases they were seen as being upset about something and in two cases they
were viewed as supporting something. In the other fifty-five cases they were
represented in various other ways, such as meeting people, or being called
upon to do something. The random sample does suggest, then, that Muslim
leaders are regularly constructed in terms of their disapproval (about a third of
the concordance lines), with only a small minority of cases representing them
as approving of something.
Additional evidence was found by looking at collocates. The most frequent
lexical lemma collocate of Muslim leaders is c o n d e m n , occurring 165 times
within a 5 to þ5 span of the term. Other collocates that hold a similar or
related meaning are angered (nine), complained (eight), criticised (thirty-four),
demanded (nineteen), denounced (seven), dismissed (eight), furious (seven),
fury (eleven), grievances (six), outrage(d) (sixteen), protest(ed) (ten), slammed
(seven) and warned (thirty-one). However, we should not jump to the conclu-
sion that such collocates always position Muslim leaders as subjects who are
doing the condemning. They may be recipients of someone else’s condemna-
tions. An examination of the 165 concordance lines of Muslim leaders
co-occurring with c o n de m n was undertaken. The majority (113) cases
involved Muslim leaders condemning a range of different things (mainly
terrorism, including 9/11 and 7/7, but also other phenomena such as forced
marriage or Israel). Twenty cases involved people saying that Muslim leaders
should be condemning something (usually terrorist attacks), as in the
following example:
The trigger for his comments was a Commons statement the previous day on the
Istanbul attacks in which Jack Straw, who as Foreign Secretary is his boss, called on
Muslim leaders to condemn the bombings in response to an MP’s question (Times, 22
November 2003).

Another twenty-eight cases involved statements that Muslim leaders were not
condemning something (again, almost always terrorist attacks), with the
strong implication that they ought to be:

He was the first senior churchman to attack moderate Muslim leaders for not
condemning Islamic suicide bombers ‘clearly and unequivocally’ (Daily Telegraph,
24 November 2006).

Finally, four cases involved Muslim leaders being condemned by others for
something:
MUSLIM leaders were condemned by Tony Blair yesterday for appearing to sympa-
thise with extremists who hate the West (Daily Mail, 6 July 2006).

The examination of c o n d e m n therefore suggests an interesting pattern.

Muslim leaders are regularly described as making condemnations, resulting in
them being represented as disapproving or even angry. However, the press

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 138 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

also reports an expectation that Muslim leaders should be engaged in con-

demning (terrorist attacks), and that some people have accused them of not
being condemnatory enough. Despite these different ‘takes’ on Muslim
leaders, it appears that the press has constructed the main role of Muslim
leaders as to condemn things. The focus on Muslim leaders thus increased in
the periods following terrorist attacks, as a debate took place around whether
they were condemning the attacks sufficiently. At other times they were seen
merely as engaging in a range of different types of condemnation, thus
resulting in an expectation that this is what Muslim leaders do. Clearly, a
Muslim leader’s condemnation (or lack of it) counts as newsworthy. Other
actions that Muslim leaders engage in may not be viewed as so interesting.
Similar patterns were found for Muslim Council, although the two most
common verb collocates were opposites: welcomed (forty-nine cases) and
condemned (forty-two cases). Other verb collocates included urging, urged,
criticised, branded, backed, complained, accused and denounced. This indi-
cates that the MCB tends to be represented as involved in a wider range of
evaluative and persuasive processes, compared to Muslim leaders, who tend
to be represented mainly as condemning.
Often the Muslim Council of Britain is represented as welcoming or
backing decisions or moves that appear to benefit Muslims. This can include
apologies for or investigations of Islamophobic remarks or policies that help
Muslims, such as:
Mr Vine, 50, said in a statement: ‘I accept that the joke was in poor taste and
I apologise profusely for any offence caused.’ Bashir Mann, a spokesman for the
Muslim Council of Great Britain, welcomed the apology and said the joke appeared
out of character (Daily Mirror, 17 April 2006).
Last year, HSBC was also the first UK bank to offer sharia-compliant mortgages and
current accounts, both of which were welcomed as landmarks by the Muslim Council
of Britain. Another welcome reform came courtesy of the Chancellor, Gordon Brown,
when he announced in the budget last year that stamp duty would be reformed to make
sure Muslims no longer had to pay it twice (Guardian, 17 April 2004).
However, the MCB is also shown to welcome other phenomena, which
benefit the whole of the United Kingdom:
The Muslim Council of Britain welcomed London’s Olympic victory. ‘This reflects
well on London’s leading position as a vibrant, multicultural city,’ said the organisa-
tion’s recently knighted secretary-general, Sir Iqbal Sacranie (Guardian, 7 July 2005).
It is also shown to welcome decisions that suggest a moderate interpretation
of Islamic law. For example, in 2007 a British schoolteacher in Sudan was
arrested, accused of insulting Islam’s prophet. She had named a class teddy
bear ‘Muhammad’, and several parents complained. When she was released, the
Daily Mirror reported that the MCB ‘welcomed the release’ (4 December 2007).

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 Muslim Council and Muslim leaders 139

Similarly, the MCB is reported to have welcomed the departure of Omar Bakri
(see Chapter 7) from the United Kingdom (Daily Telegraph, 9 August 2005).
In terms of condemning, again it is often the case that the MCB appears to
be represented as advocating peace. For example, the MCB is described as
condemning bombings, killings, hostage taking and terrorists. However, there
are cases when some newspapers print disapproval of the MCB’s actions. For
example, a letter to The Sun questions why the MCB condemned a chief
constable who made a joke about suicide bombers:
TAYSIDE Chief Constable John Vine was forced to apologise for a joke about suicide
bombers. Why? Suicide bombers are murdering people in Iraq including coalition
forces. During the war there were many jokes about Hitler and his henchmen. It was
the same with the IRA when they were planting bombs in Britain. But the Muslim
Council for Great Britain has condemned Vine rather than show they are British and
are firmly against al-Qaeda (Sun, ‘Letters’, 19 April 2006).
Additionally, the Daily Mail appears to be defensive of gay rights when it
runs a story about an investigation of the head of the MCB, who is described
as condemning civil partnerships for gay and lesbian couples:
SCOTLAND Yard has begun an investigation into one of Britain’s most senior
Muslims after he described homosexuality as ‘harmful’. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of
the Muslim Council of Britain, also condemned civil partnerships for gay and lesbian
couples (Daily Mail, 12 January 2006).
For both the Muslim Council and Muslim leaders, the two most frequent adjec-
tives used to describe them are moderate and mainstream. At first glance, these
adjectives appear to suggest a representation that is intended to be positive.
However, this is not always the case. For example, there are two cases of
supposedly mainstream Muslim Council in the corpus (both from The Times in
2005). Moreover, The Guardian, in an article that is supportive of the Muslim
Council, refers to it as a relatively mainstream organisation (25 March 2009).
Leo McKinstry, writing in the Daily Express (15 August 2005), reports on a
televised documentary programme that ‘shows that the Muslim Council is not
the moderate body it is so often portrayed as’. Claudia Joseph in the Daily Mail
(4 September 2005), referring to the same programme, uses the term supposedly
moderate Muslim Council. Around the same time, The Observer (14 August
2005) carried out its own investigation, claiming that, ‘far from being moderate,
the Muslim Council of Britain has its origins in the extreme orthodox politics in
Pakistan’. There are also three cases of journalists using ironic distancing quotes
around ‘moderate’ Muslim Council (once in The Daily Telegraph and twice in
the Daily Mail). Questions about the extent of the moderation of the Muslim
Council are therefore present across the entire British press, regardless of
political stance or tabloid/broadsheet distinction. Similarly, out of 104 cases of
moderate Muslim leaders, ten of them put the word moderate in ironic quotes.

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 140 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

Generally, then, Muslim leaders have a slightly more negative discourse

prosody than the Muslim Council, perhaps because the term Muslim leaders is
a less specific term that does not require hostile newspapers actually to name
anybody. However, irrespective of their presentation, the high frequency of
the terms Muslim leaders and Muslim Council in the corpus further reinforces
the presentation of Muslims by the British press as a coherent group.

Muslim country/countries
Another pair of collectivising terms to examine in this chapter is Muslim
country (1,841 occurrences) and Muslim countries (2,106 occurrences). One
set of collocates of Muslim country/countries consists of adverbs of scale:
predominantly, mainly, overwhelmingly, largely, mostly, particularly. These
words are used to indicate that a country has a large population of people who
practise Islam, but allows for exceptions. The phrase overwhelmingly Muslim
country (almost always occurring in the broadsheets) is worth taking note of,
particularly as this adverb suggests that the writer has a somewhat negative
stance. Examination of concordance lines also indicates that the phrase tends
to occur in negative descriptions:
There had been fears that the match at the New Den would be a target for far-right
groups following the bombings in London by Islamist terrorists, as Iran is an over-
whelmingly Muslim country (Daily Telegraph, 27 July 2005).
And in a sign of how the affair has dangerously escalated religious tensions in the
overwhelmingly Muslim country, a furious mob of several hundred militant Muslims
went on the rampage in a Christian village near where the funeral ceremony was taking
place, setting houses on fire and terrorising residents (Independent, 11 May 1998).

Another set of collocates refers to bans or strictness: strict (fifty-nine),

alcohol (thirty-five), strictly (thirteen), forbidden (nine), booze (eight), topless
(four). While bans on alcohol or going topless are referred to as strict, they do
not usually contain any other form of evaluation (such as being (un)fair), and
occasionally note exceptions to the rule:
His Dubai bar will have to be in a hotel – the only place where the strict Muslim
country allows westerners to drink alcohol (Sun, 2 April 2005).

A third set of collocates refers to moderate (twenty-seven), secular (twenty-six),

democratic (twelve), liberal (fifteen), friendly (nine) or tolerant (six) Muslim
countries. Although the concept of a liberal Muslim country is approvingly
evaluated in the press, the extent of liberality is frequently questioned:
Tunisia boasts that it’s the most liberal Muslim country in Africa, but evidently
Tunisians are not so loose-moraled that they can feel a woman’s arm any day of the
week (Mail on Sunday, 4 April 1999).

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 Muslim country/countries 141

In other cases, the concept of a liberal Muslim country is described as

relative:

They have similar climates, they are fairly liberal Muslim countries (compared to
Saudi and Pakistan at least), and both are trying to cater to the European second
home and investment market and bolster their tourist traffic (Daily Mail, 12 October
2007).

Overall, then, the use of positive modifiers, such as moderate or liberal,

has the potential effect of implying that attitudes and practices in
Muslim countries are not expected to be accurately described by these
adjectives.
A fourth common set of collocates refers to names of countries. Those
countries that are most likely to be described as a Muslim country are Turkey
(144 times), Saudi Arabia (seventy-seven), Pakistan (sixty-six), Indonesia
(sixty-three) and Iran (forty-eight). However, there are many other cases
when these countries are referred to without being explicitly called a Muslim
country, and therefore a question arises with regard to which Muslim countries
are actually being written about in the British press. Table 5.1 shows the twenty
countries with populations with the highest proportions of Muslims in them. All
of them contain at least 1 per cent of the world’s Muslim population,
and collectively they account for 83.8 per cent of the world’s Muslims. The
last column of Table 5.1 shows how many times each country is referred to in
the corpus.
Comparing the last two columns of figures, it is clear that there is not a
particularly strong correlation between the number of Muslims in a country
and the importance that country is assigned in terms of it occurring in
articles about Muslims in the British press. The country that contains
the most Muslims, Indonesia (where 12.9 per cent of Muslims live), is
actually the twelfth most frequently named country in the corpus. On the
other hand, Iraq, which has only 2 per cent of the world’s Muslims, is
the most commonly discussed country in the corpus. Other countries that
are frequently mentioned are Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In other
words, the British press tends to overlook the place that contains the
most Muslims, and instead focuses on countries where there are smaller
concentrations of them. This finding is congruent with John Richardson’s
(2004: xvii) argument that the ‘Muslimness’ of countries such as Indonesia
is often backgrounded in the British press. On the other hand, the Muslim
countries that are foregrounded tend to be those that are involved in major
conflicts or are viewed as dangerous and problematic in other ways.
In terms of ‘news value’, this is not surprising, although an unforeseen
consequence of the focus on such countries is that it will create an
association between Islam and problems.

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 142 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

Table 5.1 Top twenty countries with the highest numbers of Muslims

Percentage of world Frequency in

Country Total Muslim population Muslim population the corpus

Indonesia 202,867,000 12.9 7,890

Pakistan 174,082,000 11.1 40,985
India 160,945,000 10.3 28,479
Bangladesh 145,312,000 9.3 4,651
Egypt 78,513,000 5.0 13,807
Nigeria 78,056,000 5.0 5,039
Iran 73,777,000 4.7 55,115
Turkey 73,619,000 4.7 22,812
Algeria 34,199,000 2.2 4,831
Iraq 30,428,000 2.0 145,266
Morocco 31,933,000 2.0 6,720
Saudi Arabia 24,949,000 2.0 30,915
Sudan 30,121,000 1.9 8,560
Afghanistan 28,072,000 1.9 58,171
Ethiopia 28,063,000 1.8 2,934
Uzbekistan 26,469,000 1.7 3,122
Yemen 23,363,000 1.5 5,827
China 21,667,000 1.4 14,559
Syria 20,196,000 1.3 13,538
Malaysia 16,581,000 1.1 3,978

Source: Pew Research Center (2009).

Branches of Islam
The final section of this chapter is concerned with different branches and
movements within Islam, and the extent to which different newspapers make
such distinctions. Just as Christianity can be divided into various large and
small denominations (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Adventist,
Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, etc), Islam can also be categorised as
consisting of numerous groupings, the largest group being Sunni Muslims,
then Shia. Other groupings or approaches include Sufis, Ahmaddiyans and the
Kharijites. The two main branches can be further subdivided. For example,
the Sunni branch comprises a number of schools of thought: Hanafi, Maliki,
Shafi’i and Hanbali, as well as Salafi or Wahhabi Islam. It is beyond the remit
of this book to provide a description of how these groupings differ from each
other; instead, we are more concerned with whether such groupings are
recognised by different newspapers, and whether there has been a growing
awareness over time of such distinctions, particularly considering that
numbers of articles about Islam have grown since 9/11. Has this sudden
interest in Islam resulted in a more nuanced understanding of the different

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 Branches of Islam 143

branches of Islam among the British press, or is the popularity of the term
Muslim world a clear indication that little attempt is made to acknowledge
these branches?
Figure 5.1 shows the joint frequencies of Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Salafi and
Wahhabi7 for each newspaper. We did not include some terms because they
tended to refer mainly to names of people rather than branches of the religion
(e.g. Maliki, Hanabli). There were 47,847 references to these terms across the
corpus, of which 59 per cent consisted of the term Shia and 37 per cent Sunni
(the other terms were rarer, with Wahhabi and Sufi being about 2 per cent each
and Salafi having fewer than 1 per cent).
Such terms are most common in the two left-leaning broadsheets, then the
two right-leaning broadsheets, with the ‘popular’ press making fewer distinc-
tions. However, before we conclude that the broadsheets more frequently
acknowledge different branches within Islam, we need to take into account
the fact that the ‘quality’ newspapers contain more text. Therefore, Figure 5.2
shows the number of references to these branches of Islam divided by the
number of times the newspaper mentions the word Islam itself. (Cases such as
Sunni Islam were excluded from the count of Islam.) This figure gives a better
idea of how often the branches of Islam are referred to, in relation to the
hypernymic term.
In this figure, the bars indicate which newspapers refer to different
branches of Islam (as opposed to Islam itself). The larger the bar, the more
frequently the newspaper refers to branches of Islam. All the broadsheets,
apart from The Observer, make more references to the branches of Islam than
the word Islam. On the other hand, the tabloids tend to make more references
to Islam, although the one left-leaning tabloid, the Daily Mirror, does have a
notably higher proportion of references to branches of Islam than the right-
leaning tabloids. A distinction can therefore be made between newspapers
referring to Sunnis, Shias, Sufis, etc. (which tend to be broadsheets) and those
that are more likely to refer merely to Islam (which tend to be tabloids).
Additionally, it is notable that, in both groups, it is a left-leaning newspaper
(The Independent and the Daily Mirror) that has the highest number of
references to branches of Islam.
On the one hand, it is encouraging that the broadsheets do appear to make
an effort to distinguish between different branches of Islam, rather than
relying merely on a single term, Islam, which, if used heavily, is likely to
have a homogenising effect, backgrounding differences between Muslims and
emphasising sameness (in a similar way to the term Muslim world). However,

7
We took into account the various spellings of ‘Wahhabi’ in the corpus, such as ‘Wahabbi’,
‘Wahabi’, ‘Wahhabbi’ and ‘Whahabi’. We also counted cases such as ‘Shiite’ and considered
all plural forms of the terms, as well as terms that ended in ‘-ism’.

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 144 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

18,000

16,000

14,000

12,000

10,000

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

0
t

es

or

ar

ss

le
ai
en

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es
ia

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Figure 5.1 References to Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Salafi and Wahhabi for individual
newspapers

1.8

1.6

1.4

1.2

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
nt

es

or

ar

ss

le
ai
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ia

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ly

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Figure 5.2 Proportion of times that newspapers refer to branches of Islam as

opposed to Islam itself

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 Branches of Islam 145

14,000

12,000

10,000

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

0
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Figure 5.3 References to Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Salafi and Wahhabi over time,
1998–2009

it should also be noted that, collectively, these words tend to collocate with
words such as militia, insurgents, Baghdad, Iraq, Kurdish and radical, so they
tend to be used in contexts that refer to conflict or extremism. This pattern of
representation thus echoes the earlier findings from Chapter 2: just as Islam is
reported on in contexts of conflict, the same is true for the branches of Islam.
Figure 5.3 shows how references to these branches of Islam changed over
time. Interestingly, it seems that the ‘9/11 effect’ is not so strong here, with
very few references to different branches until 2003, and then a sharp rise
until 2005. What happened in 2003 to cause this rise? An examination of
collocates of these words that year reveals that they reference terms that refer
to the Iraq war, such as Saddam, Baghdad and Iraq. The invasion of Iraq
resulted in a focus on the distinctions between Shia and Sunni Muslims,
particularly those who were living in Iraq who engaged in both a long period
of factional communal violence and insurgency against the Western forces in
the country.
Figure 5.4 shows the relationship between references to Islam and branches
of Islam. As with Figure 5.3, the longer the bar for a particular year, the more
times that branches of Islam are referred to, as opposed to Islam itself. This figure
does not differ much from Figure 5.3, although it is notable that the two years
when different branches of Islam are referred to least, compared to Islam itself,
are 2001 and 2002. There is an ‘inverse 9/11 effect’ here, with the discourse

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 146 Muslim world: collectivisation and differentiation

2.5

1.5

0.5

0
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Figure 5.4 Proportion of times that newspapers refer to branches of Islam as

opposed to Islam itself over time, 1998–2009

directly after 9/11 being less concerned about making distinctions between
branches of Islam, but more likely simply to discuss Islam as a single concept.
Even if we consider only words relating to Wahhabism, the branch of Islam
that is often most strongly associated with Osama Bin Laden (although
scholars such as Commins, 2006, have pointed out that Bin Laden’s ideology
differed from Wahhabism in crucial ways), again these words are most
frequent from 2003 to 2005. Thus, in the period after 9/11 the British press
appears to have been especially unwilling to acknowledge different branches
of Islam, instead adopting the strategy of referring to Islam as a unified whole.

Conclusion
Overall, our examination of collectivisation and differentiation processes in
the corpus has confirmed John Richardson’s (2004) findings. The highly
frequent terms Muslim community and Muslim world tend to be used uncritic-
ally, to signify a mainly homogeneous group of Muslims (in the United
Kingdom and globally, respectively), although there are also references to a
problematic minority within. These constructs are frequently represented as
separate from, and in tension with, the rest of the United Kingdom or ‘the
West’. Analysis of the terms for branches of Islam provided evidence that the
tabloids in particular seem more likely to conceive of Islam as homogeneous,

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 Conclusion 147

and that during 2001 and 2002 this phenomenon is particularly pronounced.
However, when newspapers begin to acknowledge concepts such as Sunni
and Shia Islam, it is mainly in the context of the Iraq war. Muslim countries
tend to be discussed in terms of how strict or liberal they are, while the
countries that attract the most attention are not those with the most Muslims
but those that are seen as the most dangerous, oppressive or problematic.
It is interesting to consider the findings in this chapter in connection with
the results of a Gallup survey of the attitudes of 500 London Muslims and
1,200 members of the UK general public (Mogahed 2007). Of the London
Muslims, 57 per cent said they identified strongly with the United Kingdom,
as opposed to 48 per cent of the general public. Additionally, London
Muslims were less likely to say that they wanted to live in a neighbourhood
made up of people who mostly shared their religious or ethnic background
(25 per cent versus 35 per cent of the general public) and were more likely
to have positive views of Catholics and fundamentalist Christians than the
general public did. London Muslims also had higher levels of confidence in
the local police, the honesty of elections, the judicial system and the national
government than the general public.
Mogahed (2007: 2) argues that the survey ‘provides a new perspective on
the growing debate over multiculturalism vs. assimilation in the UK. Contrary
to the typical zero-sum framing of the issue, the study indicates that, particu-
larly for London’s Muslims, strong identification with one’s religion and
one’s nationality are not mutually exclusive.’ While these findings reflect
the opinions only of Muslims living in London, they are an indication that, in
some areas of the United Kingdom, British Muslims tend to feel a stronger
relationship to Britain and are more tolerant of other religions and ethnic
groups than the average. Such a picture is at odds with the reporting in the
British media, which tends to stress problems between Muslim communities
and the rest of the United Kingdom, and depicts Muslim leaders as being
easily offended and either needlessly condemnatory or insufficiently condem-
natory. If anything, considering the picture in the press, the results of the
attitude survey perhaps go against expectations. It might be assumed that the
Muslims surveyed would have developed more cynical and separatist atti-
tudes as a result of the ways that they are written about in the media. The
survey results are thus a testament to people who have shown remarkable
tolerance in the face of misrepresentation.

https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511920103.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press